


The Walls Have Ears

by ShiDreamin



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Kenhina can be taken as platonic or hinted, Post-Time Skip, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiDreamin/pseuds/ShiDreamin
Summary: Every party ends up like this: free advertising, wasted hours, and a lot of booze.“Kenma-san.”This time, Kenma finds himself bumping into a crow. Just one.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma, Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma, Kageyama Tobio & Kozume Kenma
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	The Walls Have Ears

Drunk.

Miserably, horrible drunk.

The thing about publicity events is that no one actually gets drunk at them. Or no one is supposed to. The media is everywhere, swarming hungry dogs that they are, and they’ll snap up every little scrap thrown their way. It takes Kenma one, two maybe, events before he realized.

Smile, or don’t. Stay warm, stay cold.

Choose one persona and stick with it, or the media will never let you go.

Kenma has a battle plan for parties. It’s called _avoidance_ , and it worked wonderfully until one half of the chaotic Miya twins (it’s Atsumu, he knows, but Kenma wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he knows) forces him before the cameras, and even though every bit of Kenma wanted to turn and leave he’s not an idiot. When even Ushijima waltzed up to the camera’s flashes Kenma realized that there was little point in even trying.

_(“Represent the cats,” coach had said, proud. A hand ruffling loose bangs and then he was gone, leaving Kenma alone except for a stiff woman assigned from the government and a half-empty luggage with enough clothes for a week._

_It’s okay. Volleyball was never his endgame.)_

So Kenma goes. No accompaniment, of course; it’s a “private event” which means there’s likely twice as many reporters. He goes and expects nothing, except maybe to walk out with a pocketbook of investors. He’s a star against the crowd for only a moment before the next person steps out, a second year college student representing a school of art and design.

It’s easy enough to be swept under the lights and the chatter, the stench of alcohol and the buzz of some unnamed substances in the air making conversation putrid. Kenma finds himself surrounded by an ever-changing cast of people, not by his own design but rather their own desire to find something new to gossip about. He gives them the name of his startup, enough for them to guess his valuation, and nothing else.

They give him nothing he doesn’t already know. But, well, maybe that’s because half of his job _is_ knowing.

“Hi! I’m Takeshita, the mangaka of 10,000 girlfriends…”

“Oh my gosh, is that Kenma? It is! I’m such a big fan, have you heard of Allure Cosmetics?”

“I, um, I sent you an email. Um, I’m a big fan, my name is Ivan, er, I’m. Uh.”

“So, see any hot chicks?”

Boring. It’s all boring, predictable, simpler than the AIs running circles around the barebones security system of this event. It’s too bad Kenma never went down the demon king route—the price of sending endless spam mail to the people here would be too low, and the program too easy.

But it’s to be expected. Every party ends up like this: free advertising, wasted hours, and a lot of booze.

“Kenma-san.”

This time, Kenma finds himself bumping into a crow. Just one.

Kageyama looks different without his murder. He’s silent, tall, that very king that Kenma had ignored so steadily to focus on the axe he swung with brutal finality. The camera flashes tick upwards, voices overlapping as they beg for even a scrap of attention from the man.

“It’s me.” Kenma nods. To say that he’s surprised would be an overstatement—it hadn’t been hard to figure out that Kageyama was invited to the event. The surprising part, if it could be called that, is that Kageyama had decided to come, and on top of that, spoken to Kenma first.

Perhaps there’s hope to be found in these parties after all.

Kageyama returns the nod, holding a stare between them for a few seconds before nodding once more, shuffling to Kenma’s side. He’s not hiding, not exactly, but he’s trying to diminish himself into the crowd. Trying to disappear.

It reminds Kenma, just the slightest, of Hinata.

“Can we leave soon?” Kageyama eventually supplies, between the third glass and the seventh. He’s getting fidgety, hands clenching and unclenching around his glass, wrinkling his once finely pressed pants. Kenma can almost see the court he’s envisioning, the sweat and the heat suffocating, the roar of the audience behind his ears.

“Don’t bother.” Kenma replies, the sound fading to a string quintet and the sound of clinking glasses and camera clicks. They’re going to hound you if you don’t stay for at least an hour.”

Kageyama quiets, his jaw closing with an audible click. A woman comes around, a reporter for the Daily Sun she explains, asking about future teams and placements, and then, a moment before she turns to go, a simple nod to Kenma.

“Would you ever step back onto the court?” She asks him. She’s put away her pen, her notepad folded up, and it’s when his eyes trace hers that she smiles. “Off the record. I promise.”

“No,” Kenma replies, and that’s that.

He’s expecting, perhaps, Kageyama to launch into an impassioned speech about the glory of volleyball, the importance of it on Kenma’s health, how he’s somehow walked onto a path of diabetes and cancer at 40 because he’s chosen to retire early. Kuroo would say something like that, only half serious, but a whisper of worry in his eyes. Hinata would cry, _has_ cried, before treating Kenma to a bowl of ramen that Kenma ended up paying for after discovering Hinata forgot his wallet.

Instead, Kageyama shifts from side to side before turning to face Kenma head on.

“What are you doing here?” Kageyama asks. Direct. The sound of a ball slapping the court.

“Free publicity,” Kenma replies. Up, it goes, floating from his fingers overhead.

“Free?” Kageyama repeats, his mouth pinched. His brows knit, so obvious, plain and easy in a way he rarely displayed on the court. “Wouldn’t you rather be practicing?”

“Too much work,” Kenma chuckles. The conversation is familiar, nostalgic, in the way his underclassmen once were when they discovered Nekoma’s setter would rather lay in bed than sweat on the court. He wouldn’t have pegged Kageyama to miss that detail, but then again, the man off the court is a world’s away from the man on.

Then again, maybe he’s the same, and it’s Kenma who hides his knife in sticky fingers.

“I’m going to leave.” The ball comes back down.

“So soon?” Kenma needles. “Why bother showing up?” Up it goes again, though a little unsteady, a little awkward. Kageyama is decent enough, and Kenma lets himself smile with all teeth. He would never turn down an impromptu game.

“My rivals are here,” Kageyama points out, and here it’s easy to see, the tracking of his eyes, the predatory clenching of his teeth. The way his eyes don’t stray from the uniformed figures in the crowd, the familiar itch of their fingers. The lights that seem to flicker into sight, the flickering memory of a ball set high. The bellow of a crow, hunting for its treasure.

“Have you even talked to Ushijima?” High and light. A perfect arc.

“No. We’ll talk on the court.” Of course. It’s so Karasuno in their bewildered way, in the happy faces they bare as the walls come down and the vines crawl upwards. They carry no keys, no locks, nothing more than their wings bursting free.

The cage jingles.

“But you talked to me.”

“We’re not rivals anymore.”

The ball hits the floor.

It’s logical. Simple. They’re not high school students now; just two grown men standing in a crowded hallway to celebrate the “up and coming” influencers of the generation. They’re in completely different fields: Kenma for tech startups, Kageyama for national athletes.

They’re not rivals anymore.

It ticks him off.

Kenma will blame it on the alcohol later. Will roll his eyes and toss his hair and think about how he’s not that same scrawny kid who slept through classes with sore muscles, how he hates moving a little less now, and how the knife in his hand is no longer so sharp.

_(“You have guts!” Yamamoto laughed, and they cheered, all of them, this wild herd of stray cats that had banded together for Kenma. To support him. To let him breathe._

_To let him be the brain._

_Watching. Thinking. Analyzing, on the court and off._

_Who said he had to stop?)_

The ball isn’t Kenma’s to set anymore.

But there’s more than one way to score a point.

He opens the text from Hinata too late in the afternoon, sometime between happy hours for the working and gaming hours for himself. Kenma groans, wiping away the sleep and the vile taste of overpriced sake from his mouth, peering at the dimly lit screen.

And that’s—that’s Shoyo, of course, recklessly flying upwards even with a knife at his neck and chains from his back. Kenma grins, laughs, his shoulders shaking against the bedframe.

“Yes,” he types, “you can keep the money.”

Kenma has no plans on going back to the court. The sweat, the lights, the cheers and the chants and then the quiet, that moment frozen in time as the ball falls, gently, gently, against his fingers. The weight, weightless, as it flies upwards.

That perfect arc.

Yaku, diving to the floor, the time unwinding as the ball flies upward. Yamamoto slapping his back, his eyes glowing, his fangs sharp. Kuroo, holding a volleyball in his hands, quiet sans the moments when he hit the ball in the air. Coach Nekomata.

Hinata crashing against the sandy beaches, a grin alight on his face.

Oxygen to the brain.

“Give him hell.”

**Author's Note:**

> With the final chapter of Haikyuu coming out soon, I figured it was about time to dig my heels in and reread+rework a lot of my old fics. And uh, what do you know! There is some usable stuff in there (with edits ofc)
> 
> This isn't an old fic! I wrote this recently thinking about Hinata's setter harem :,D the boi doesnt realize his power (yet) huh? I wanted to play around with the feeling of his setters and their relationship with each other (and in relation to Hinata) post TS
> 
> If you enjoyed reading my fics, please check out my twitter [ @Shidreamin ](https://twitter.com/shidreamin/)! I’m more active on there, and you’ll be able to see my zine previews before I post them here, as well as participate in giveaways (one coming tomorrow huhu)! ♥


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